Game times out after character is selected. Can't play the game anymore

Sarannah · July 13

weights44 wrote: »

Just adding an update to this. I’ve stripped all user data and started from scratch. Deleted all add-ons. Turned multi thread rendering off. Switched from game pad mode to mouse and keyboard. And swapped from full screen to windowed view for now. And I can now log in to each character. I’m going to keep testing it to see what May/may not work.

So far any add on I download causes the game to crash. Multi-thread rendering causes game to crash. Game pad mode causes game to crash,

This is where I’m at in trying to figure this out. I have no idea why any of these specific issues are causing this either. I swapped my gpu out as well and it seems regardless of what gpu I use it’s the same either way. Hopefully someone at Zos can use this data to try and figure out what’s going on and how to prevent it from happening down the road.

Good to read you can now log into each character, that atleast will let you play. Judging by the bolded part, this really seems a CPU load issue to me now.

-Make sure to keep an eye on your CPU and GPU temps as well. So they may be in line with what they should be.
-Check your displaysettings in windows itself, maybe there is something in the fullscreen or windowed settings causing this.
-Cap your FPS in the nvidia settings, so you aren't generating more frames than your display can handle. This will also take a load off the CPU(and GPU), as it won't have to ask for more frames to be generated. (Personally in nvidia settings I limit my general FPS to my monitor refreshrate, and also in nvidia settings place a lower FPS limit on the game itself when needed. This way I never use more CPU or GPU than needed.)

weights44 · July 13

Sarannah wrote: »

weights44 wrote: »

Just adding an update to this. I’ve stripped all user data and started from scratch. Deleted all add-ons. Turned multi thread rendering off. Switched from game pad mode to mouse and keyboard. And swapped from full screen to windowed view for now. And I can now log in to each character. I’m going to keep testing it to see what May/may not work.

So far any add on I download causes the game to crash. Multi-thread rendering causes game to crash. Game pad mode causes game to crash,

This is where I’m at in trying to figure this out. I have no idea why any of these specific issues are causing this either. I swapped my gpu out as well and it seems regardless of what gpu I use it’s the same either way. Hopefully someone at Zos can use this data to try and figure out what’s going on and how to prevent it from happening down the road.

Good to read you can now log into each character, that atleast will let you play. Judging by the bolded part, this really seems a CPU load issue to me now.

-Make sure to keep an eye on your CPU and GPU temps as well. So they may be in line with what they should be.
-Check your displaysettings in windows itself, maybe there is something in the fullscreen or windowed settings causing this.
-Cap your FPS in the nvidia settings, so you aren't generating more frames than your display can handle. This will also take a load off the CPU(and GPU), as it won't have to ask for more frames to be generated. (Personally in nvidia settings I limit my general FPS to my monitor refreshrate, and also in nvidia settings place a lower FPS limit on the game itself when needed. This way I never use more CPU or GPU than needed.)

I’m still super new to pc gaming so trying to figure all this out. My cpu before all this happened was barely pushing 30% use with ESO running with multiple apps up. I know it isn’t the greatest cpu but it’s just an i512th Gen on my main pc. Ever si bc e the update though cpu usage was spiking to 100% the moment I selected a character. I play at 120 fps which is what my monitor is at and I have the game and nvidia setting capped there too. My gou barely ever gets hotter than 37 degree C so it stay pretty cool. My cpu barely ever heats up either since I have a 360aio on it too. I’m going to continue to play around with it and see if I can narrow it down more. Since the repair bug is going on in the launcher I’m wondering if there a corrupted file that I downloaded that’s causing a spike when characters load in. Ever since I took it off game pad mode, switched to no add ons, etc etc the cpu temps don’t spike anymore either.

weights44 · July 13

TaSheen wrote: »

Well.... in that case, let it update, see if it makes it better or worse - if better, great; if worse roll that one back.

That’s what I’m going to do once I get back home. And then trouble shoot from there. Thank you for the help.

TaSheen · July 13

weights44 wrote: »

TaSheen wrote: »

Well.... in that case, let it update, see if it makes it better or worse - if better, great; if worse roll that one back.

That’s what I’m going to do once I get back home. And then trouble shoot from there. Thank you for the help.

Eh, I wasn't much help, but I surely do hope you can get it figured out soon so you can play again!

belial5221_ESO · July 13

I bet the EXE not being there is cause by defaujlt Windows hides extensions.You gotta open explorer,goto View in top menu,then Options,then in the window that pops up View tab,and unmark the "Hide extensions for known file types".If you had access to a different PC with ESO on it you'd know if it's a PC thing or something else.There was an issue where AVs were falsely flagging launcher as a virus,maybe something quietly quarantined or corupted a file.Also,maybe reinstall it to main drive instead of a 2nd one,could be drive itself acting up.I know hardware going bad can cause alot of issues,even if the hardware is new,there's always a chance.

TaSheen · July 13

belial5221_ESO wrote: »

I bet the EXE not being there is cause by defaujlt Windows hides extensions.You gotta open explorer,goto View in top menu,then Options,then in the window that pops up View tab,and unmark the "Hide extensions for known file types".If you had access to a different PC with ESO on it you'd know if it's a PC thing or something else.There was an issue where AVs were falsely flagging launcher as a virus,maybe something quietly quarantined or corupted a file.Also,maybe reinstall it to main drive instead of a 2nd one,could be drive itself acting up.

Oh.... I bet you're right! I've had windows behaving so differently from vanilla for so many years, I totally forgot about that piece of stupidity!

weights44 · July 14

So far the game is performing well after everything I did and I wanted to thank all of you for the help. Here is what I figured out after deleting everything and basically starting over with a bare bones pc with just the OS and drivers installed.

This all began after the last update the launcher downloaded. From that moment I was receiving a error window on the launcher that stated "the launcher failed...doing a repair should fix any corrupt files". After selecting that repair option on the launcher, everything on my game started crashing. Simply deleting the game and downloading it again did NOT fix the issue. Below are the steps I had to take in order to get the game functioning properly. I know this because after doing all of this twice, I used the repair file function again just to test it to make sure that is what caused all this. And as soon as I did the game began crashing.

1. Uninstalled eso and deleted all content from pc. Every single existing file had to be removed.
2. Deleted all add-ons, add on folder itself, and I had to uninstall through minion as well. The first time I didn't do all of these steps and the game still crashed.
3. I had to take the game out of full screen mode and use it in window mode.
4. I had to reinstall the game and run it without add-ons in game pad mode. I tried installing add-ons before running the game and it still crashed. I don't know why but it happened.
5. After setting the game up I closed it out and downloaded all add-ons again.
6. Once this was done the game started working as normal.

I hope this helps anyone down the road if this issue ever happens to someone else.

virtus753 · July 14

Can you clarify whether you were running it in gamepad mode or accessibility mode? Those are not the same thing. Gamepad mode doesn’t do anything until after you’re logged into a character. Accessibility mode affects a lot more, including character selection. Having that on may have interfered.

weights44 · July 15

virtus753 wrote: »

Can you clarify whether you were running it in gamepad mode or accessibility mode? Those are not the same thing. Gamepad mode doesn’t do anything until after you’re logged into a character. Accessibility mode affects a lot more, including character selection. Having that on may have interfered.

when I mentioned "gamepad" mode I was referring to running it with a controller not mouse/keyboard. I have always run it this was since I started on pc 2 years ago. then after this issue that "gamepad" mode wouldn't allow me to play but when I swapped to using a mouse/keyboard I was able to play just fine. but that was after I had gone through and took all the other steps. Once I did that I deleted the saved data for the game and relaunched the game as if it were new and started the set up being able to use the controller again.

I hope that helped to clarify things.

virtus753 · July 15

weights44 wrote: »

virtus753 wrote: »

Can you clarify whether you were running it in gamepad mode or accessibility mode? Those are not the same thing. Gamepad mode doesn’t do anything until after you’re logged into a character. Accessibility mode affects a lot more, including character selection. Having that on may have interfered.

when I mentioned "gamepad" mode I was referring to running it with a controller not mouse/keyboard. I have always run it this was since I started on pc 2 years ago. then after this issue that "gamepad" mode wouldn't allow me to play but when I swapped to using a mouse/keyboard I was able to play just fine. but that was after I had gone through and took all the other steps. Once I did that I deleted the saved data for the game and relaunched the game as if it were new and started the set up being able to use the controller again.

I hope that helped to clarify things.

Thank you for the response.

I understand you’ve been using gamepad as your input, but this isn’t enough information to determine whether you had enabled gamepad mode, accessibility mode, or both. If you were able to use KB&M but not gamepad, then gamepad mode somehow got turned off. If the game still looked like it was using the console UI and you were able to use KB&M but not gamepad, you had accessibility mode on. The two are not the same, but they are easily confused and I’m wondering if they may have been behind some of the issues you had.

Gamepad mode is what enables the use of the gamepad input natively. It can be set to on, off, or automatic, which allows you to swap between gamepad input with console UI and KB&M input with default PC UI on the fly. When you switch input while playing a character, the UI changes accordingly—unless you’ve got gamepad set to “on” (not automatic) or are using accessibility mode, in which cases the console UI remains. Gamepad mode also doesn’t take effect until after your load your character (which is why we have to reconnect controllers after every character is loaded to resolve the input delay bug with mounting/rezzing/interacting).

Accessibility mode is a separate setting. It also uses the console UI, so it is often mistaken for or conflated with gamepad mode, but it forces that console UI regardless of input. It does not require the use of a gamepad or gamepad mode, so people with KB&M can still use it—though they will have the console UI. If accessibility mode is on but gamepad mode is not also set to “on” or “automatic”, then the gamepad input will not work natively even though the game may seem to be in gamepad mode due to the UI. For those who want to use gamepad or switch between gamepad and KB&M, the two modes (gamepad and accessibility) can be used in combination, although the UI will again always remain the console UI in that setup. Accessibility mode will also use the console UI for the opening menu and character selection, which gamepad mode alone does not. Unlike gamepad mode’s three options, accessibility mode has only “on” and “off”. It cannot be set to enable or disable itself automatically based on input, since it’s independent of that. It is meant to allow all PC users, regardless of input, access to the console UI and to additional features like “narrate chat.”

It is possible to use any combination of these two modes. I’m interested to know if these settings got switched around or bugged somehow because I remember very similar-sounding issues coming up when accessibility mode was introduced just over two years ago. Many players ended up enabling it unintentionally because of the way it was introduced. It has also sometimes caused issues where players couldn’t navigate character selection.

weights44 · July 21

Alrighty!!! So all the crap I had to do to fix a game I didn't create is all flushed down the toilet. I got through a BG and the game timed out when I left the bg. I had to relog back into the game and now I ONCE AGAIN CAN'T LOG INTO ANY CHARACTER IN THE GAME!!!

Can someone tag all of Zos to this post because I can't figure out how to do so. I don't use the forum that often. Thank you...

TaSheen · July 21

Sure.

@ZOS_Kevin, @ZOS_Bill, @ZOS_GinaBruno

ZOS_CouchTato · July 21

@weights44 I checked in on your ticket (240712-002855) and it is still in queue awaiting agent response. If you have any additional questions about your ticket, feel free to ask. After you've received a response, please include all troubleshooting you have tried for the agent, as this will help along the process.